Thursday, October 8, 2009

Jon Corzine Criticizes Chris Christie's Weight

I've been periodically following the Virginia governor's race; it seems that it would take something of a miracle for Creigh Deeds to close the gap. My take is that Bob McDonnell is probably the stronger candidate anyway, but Deeds is fighting a particularly difficult battle because of moderate Virginians' concerns about government overreach by the Obama administration.

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This morning I read my first article of this election season about the other big gubernatorial race: New Jersey's. The candidates are Jon Corzine (the Democratic incumbent), Chris Christie (the Republican challenger), and Chris Daggett (an independent).

David Halbfinger, in the Times, reports (here) that Corzine is making an issue of the fact that Christie is obese. He cites to a recent campaign ad in which Corzine accuses Christie of "throwing his weight around" and then shows unflattering video that focuses on Christie's stomach.

I watched the video on You Tube and it was more subtle than Halbfinger's article would have you think. Nevertheless, I think Corzine is living dangerously by criticizing Christie on such a personal level: there are definitely Americans who are anti-fat, but I think there are probably more who are anti-mean, and teasing/making fun of someone for his weight will be regarded by most people as mean.

Halbfinger does point out that there are few nationally-prominent overweight politicians (he mentions Bill Richardson, Mike Huckabee (pre-diet), and Sonny Perdue), and this got me to thinking that there have been -- historically -- a number of overweight Presidents, but it issomewhat hard to imagine an overweight person being elected President, nowadays, in our video-focused culture.